


emergency broadcast news

by goshemily



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-29
Updated: 2013-06-29
Packaged: 2017-12-16 14:38:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/863138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goshemily/pseuds/goshemily
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“It’s worth dying for,” Enjolras had said.</p><p>“It’s been worth dying for before,” Grantaire told him quietly, raising his head in the corner. “And we are left with graves, but no changed histories.”</p><p>The Corinthe was not, after all, a very large ship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	emergency broadcast news

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ark/gifts).



> [Ark](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ark) wrote _phenomenal_ space au hurt/comfort when I talked about how much I’d love to see some. You really should [read her story](http://et-in-arkadia.tumblr.com/post/54206825752/so-the-magnificent-soemily-put-out-a-call-for-exr). Then she said I should write some, and... um, I'm sorry. There’s not as much comfort as you might have expected, dude. I really did try, I swear! Thank you to [Overnighter](http://archiveofourown.org/users/overnighter) for looking this over.

“All we need,” Combeferre had said, “is access to a Federation transmitter. If we take it for even a second —”

“We can make them _listen_ ,” Courfeyrac said, eyes alight.

“They’ll listen; they must.” Enjolras was sharp-planed against the blue of the console. Against the blackness of space beyond their hull, he glowed.

“Who can hear the truth and not be free?” Jehan smiled for them all.

A simple plan: hack a Federation transmitter and upload a virus to beam out classified information about government abuses. Show unvarnished reality to the people, illuminate their chains, and they would perforce throw off their oppressors.

“It’s worth dying for,” Enjolras had said.

“It’s been worth dying for before,” Grantaire told him quietly, raising his head in the corner. “And we are left with graves, but no changed histories.”

*

The Corinthe was not, after all, a very large ship.

“But she’s fast,” Bahorel reminded them with his fighter’s grin. “We’ll run her easy for the next few days, save our fuel cells, and we’ll have enough for the jump from the transmitter station. Though I wouldn’t mind burning it first...” and he cracked his knuckles.

“Wouldn’t mind burning _them_ , you mean,” Joly had said.

Bahorel shrugged. Really, it was one and the same. 

Grantaire drank.

*

They flew closer, a motley band of students and fire-breathers. “Always the two things together,” Grantaire said to Bossuet. “You’d think we’d have learned our lessons better.” 

Bossuet was rueful, but he’d laughed. “We _did_ learn them; that’s the point.”

*

“Would you sleep through it all?” Enjolras asked Grantaire, and gripped his shoulder, leant close.

Grantaire had kept his eyes open, ignored the compulsion to bow his head, and said only, “I would.”

 _Coward_ went unspoken.

“This is not my war,” Grantaire had reminded him, gentle as he could, Enjolras’s fingers a brand.

“It belongs to everyone,” Enjolras said, and stepped away.

*

Now is the approach. Enjolras looks in flame, the light of the looming station a halo and an inferno as he is silhouetted at the window. Combeferre comes to his right hand, and Courfeyrac stands between them. They see the future.

“What we do,” Enjolras says, and he holds them both in turn, “we do for love.”

“Let’s get these motherfuckers,” Bahorel says.

Grantaire knows his friends prepare for death.

*

They dock and board with papers in order, a student group ready and eager to give a local broadcast on university life under the reign of the Federation.

Grantaire watches them walk out of the Corinthe with their shoulders square and their heads high. None of them had asked, at the last, if he’d stand with them.

Instead he sits like a faithful (faithless) (useless) hound, drawing each breath in and measuring it against his loathing as he waits for them not to come back. His hand closes around his bottle.

He thinks through what will happen, and he spills wine when he shakes. Combeferre will be the image of calm, the best actor in their group. Enjolras will grate at the subterfuge, but he’ll grit his teeth and do what he must to reach the end. Feuilly will use his beautiful slender artist’s hands to upload the virus, all the while letting Joly use wordplay to delight and distract the Federation newscaster, making him think they’re students anxious to share their good fortune with the galaxy.

“Feuilly’s pictures will help us get the picture across,” Joly will say, and Bossuet will groan fondly at this, one of Joly’s worst offerings.

Grantaire takes a sip and clenches his other hand inside a pretend boxing glove. His cheek is bruised from a last bout with Bahorel, the only goodbye they’ll ever say.

He imagines Jehan, standing docile to mask defiance in front of the cameras. He imagines the newscaster and the guards arrayed around the room, weapons an unsubtle threat to compel conformity. He imagines their faces as they see the feed that Feuilly’s begun, as they realize the photographs are of hidden grave sites not student festivals, as they realize they’re being beamed not locally but Federation-wide.

He imagines their guns trained on his friends.

“Long live the Republic,” Jehan will shout, and his favorite battle cry, “Long live the future!”

They’ll shoot him down.

Grantaire drinks.

He imagines the fight for escape, the sick certainty they’d have had minutes before as they walked through detectors and were searched and stood weaponless. This is only a backwater station, hardly first-rate security, hardly much staff at all, but the Federation protects itself. He imagines their blood on the gleaming white floor of the pristine lying newsroom.

They’ll be valiant. They’ll yell revolution as they fall. They’ll know no one can stop the virus. They’ll dodge lasers, dodge bullets, wrest guns from soldiers if they can, and they’ll smile as they die.

He raises his head.

There’s sound, coming closer —

Grantaire drops the wine bottle — a pity, he thinks distantly — and grabs his gun and Bahorel’s favorite lead pipe. (“An affectation!” “A pleasure.”) He walks unsteady to the doorway, and lowers the hatch.

Enjolras, Courfeyrac, Joly, Bossuet, Feuilly, and Combeferre run around the corner into the hangar. They’re firing behind themselves —

Bossuet almost trips as he turns to aim at the soldiers guarding the Corinthe — 

Feuilly falls, torn in half by a laser blast — 

Grantaire shoots the hangar guards in the back — 

Joly and Bossuet fall, tumbling together —

Grantaire stumbles down into the hangar, covering Combeferre and Enjolras as they drag a bloody Courfeyrac into the ship —

A twinge at his side — 

“Get in!” Enjolras screams, reaching a hand for him while Combeferre throws himself into the pilot’s seat — 

And they lift off, Grantaire falling to the floor beside his shattered bottle as Combeferre pushes immediately into warp speed, setting a course for some brighter sky.

*

Enjolras crouches next to Courfeyrac, holding his hair back and using his own sleeve to dab the blood at Courfeyrac’s temple with more tenderness than Grantaire has ever seen. Grantaire curls around himself and watches, looks at the tension in Combeferre’s shoulders as he comes to Courfeyrac’s other side, thinks of the muffled sighs from Enjolras’s room the night before, thinks of the bruises on their necks and their casual touches in the years he’s known them, thinks of their happy mouths and level hearts, thinks of the three of them certain of the dawn.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers.

Courfeyrac is the only one to look at him. “My friend,” he says. With red at his lips he takes the handkerchief from his pocket, and he clumsily pats Combeferre’s bloody knuckles.

When Courfeyrac dies, Grantaire is in the pilot’s seat, facing away to give them their privacy.

Combeferre follows within the hour, a grave smile on his face, held in Enjolras’s arms.

Be free, Grantaire thinks, and looks at the stars.

*

The Corinthe jars Grantaire awake from where he’s lying sticky over the console. He sits up and it’s less than pleasant. They’ve fallen out of warp speed; they’re hovering in empty space.

He turns around. “Enjolras?”

Enjolras lifts his head. Courfeyrac and Combeferre lie on either side of him. He’s propped against the wall, and his chest is crimson. There’s a fierce light in his eyes and he’s never been more beautiful.

“We’re almost out of fuel.”

Enjolras shrugs. He doesn’t look unhappy.

“I couldn’t watch you all die.” It’s not an apology.

“You don’t believe.” It’s no absolution.

Grantaire comes to kneel in front of him. He reaches for Enjolras’s shirt and hesitates.

“It’s no use,” Enjolras says, “but that’s all right.”

Grantaire is silent.

“They hear us,” Enjolras says. “Grantaire, the ship’s newsfeed still works. It’s been nothing but our information for hours. The virus held. They’re — they’ll learn about what the Federation really is.”

Grantaire doesn’t bother to say that it’s not a lack of information keeping the people from rising. He’s said as much in the past; it doesn’t matter anymore. His mouth twists. It won’t matter _soon_ , he means.

Enjolras is very golden in the Corinthe’s dying light. Only the red emergency panels are still glowing, and they’re fathoms away now, unreachable by the pilot’s chair.

They wait, breathing together.

“I’m one of you,” Grantaire says quietly.

“I thought it was a wine-stain.” Enjolras’s voice is equally soft.

“No; it happened when I joined you in the hangar.”

“I’m glad you did.”

“I’d do it again.”

Enjolras reaches for his hand.

*

Space is silent. 

Spaceships are not.

Space is a void, a blank, a null set, stars and whole galaxies less than nothing.

Spaceships are noisy close cramped things, smelling like overworked engines and sweat-stained uniforms and humanity looking for horizons. They scuttle in the face of the infinite.

The Corinthe smells like copper, and it drifts.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from Daphne Gottlieb’s extraordinary poem “[sexy balaclava](http://www.daphnegottlieb.com/poems.html).”


End file.
